UPDATED: The Samsung Galaxy Ring and Oura Ring Gen 3 are set to fight it out for the best smart ring crown.
The smart ring war has officially kicked off, and the Oura Ring has been joined by the Samsung Galaxy Ring. It’s the first smart ring from one of the giants of tech, and looks set to put smart rings on the map.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring brings the idea of a fitness and wellness tracking smart ring to a wider audience for the first time. While smart rings have taken off in the past two years, they still are limited to a niche audience – and most ‘normal’ people are probably unaware such technology even exists.
But if you’ve had your head turned by the Samsung Galaxy Ring, you might want to know how it compares to the Oura Ring Gen 3. That’s been the best smart ring to date – and it’s still the one to beat.
Read our reviews: Oura Ring Gen 3 review – two years on | Samsung Galaxy Ring review
19 Aug 2024: This article was updated to reflect complete testing of the Samsung Galaxy Ring.
Price and Comparison
Oura is considered an expensive piece of kit – and starts at $299 for the entry-level Heritage finish with a mandatory $5.99/£4.99 subscription. It works with iOS and Android, however, so everyone can get involved.
But somehow Samsung has opted not to undercut Oura and has made it a more expensive option. The Galaxy Ring costs $399/£399. There’s no subscription, but it would take you nearly two years to break even on the purchase. And it’s only compatible with Android smartphones, but thankfully, from any brand.
That’s a long time to break even – and we dare say that you might replace your Galaxy Ring with an upgraded version in that time. So is there really a saving to be had? That’s a personal call, but controversially, we don’t consider the Galaxy Ring to be better value at this moment in time.
You also can’t question Oura’s commitment to rolling out new features. It’s been dropping new stuff almost every week for most of this year. Obviously, we have no clue about Samsung’s commitment to the space – but it usually works on annual cycles. But it has rolled almost all its smartwatch features back to 2021’s Galaxy Watch 4 – and continues to do so.
But if your choice comes down to price – we’d say not to be put off by Oura’s subscription and take the plunge.
Winner: Oura
Design and Comfort
Smart rings don’t differ too much in terms of design – let’s face it, they are usually loops of metal (titanium usually) that come in multiple sizes to fit different fingers.
The Oura Ring Gen 3 comes in a ridged “Heritage” design as standard – which adds slightly to its appearance of bulk. You can pay a tad more and go for the smooth, rounded “Horizon” – which is more similar in appearance to the Galaxy Ring.
The Oura weighs 4-6g depending on size, while the Samsung Galaxy Ring starts at 2.6g – so it’s certainly an advantage for Samsung here. Both are around 7mm wide and 2.6mm thick.
The Samsung has a nice concave design which adds a little bit of visual interest – and it’s designed to ward off scratches on the surface. We did scuff the edge using weights in the gym, so be careful with that kind of activity.
The Galaxy Ring was slimmer and lighter in our side-by-side tests, and one of the most comfortable rings we’ve tested. And comes in black, silver, and gold options (see above).
Winner: Samsung edges a close content
Health tracking and features
This is where it gets trickier – and where Oura holds a large advantage over Samsung. Throughout 2024, Oura has been adding features pretty much weekly, in a huge expansion of its health and women’s health tracking features.
Not only that, it’s opened up to 800 partner apps via Oura Integrations (think Strava, Clue, Headspace, Clue, Natural Cycles) and introduced Labs to test experimental features – which currently offers the symptom checker and the Oura Advisor AI LLM chatbot.
Sleep is the main tracking element of the Oura Ring – and it’s its number one feature. It’s an excellent sleep tracker, and we use it as a control device for comparing most other wearables, with top accuracy validated in clinical trials. It’s also fairly data-heavy and there’s loads of detail – and it’s fairly actionable.
The main list of what the Oura Ring tracks is:
- Sleep (including stages, restlessness, sleep score, breathing regularity, HR, HRV, efficiency)
- Daytime stress
- Stress resilience
- Activity
- Heart rate/resting heart rate
- Readiness (via HRV)
- Trends
- Cardiovascular age
- VO2 max
- Blood oxygen
- Menstrual cycle tracking via temperature sensor
- Pregnancy insights
The Samsung Galaxy Ring is also health-focused, with a big focus on sleep and coaching.
It’s an excellent sleep tracker, with good accuracy, and some really intelligently thought out sleep coaching features. We also love the sleep chronotypes feature, which characterizes your sleep with an animal – to help you understand your habits.
We also loved the Energy Score, which in our tests we found to be accurate with our own perceptions, with Galaxy AI adding helpful insights into why scores might be higher or lower than normal.
It’s list of trackables are:
- Sleep and sleep coaching via chronotypes and AI analysis
- Movement during sleep, sleep latency, heart and respiratory rate
- Energy Score (HRV driven daily readiness score)
- Stress
- AI wellness tips
- Heart rate alert
- Auto workout detection
- Menstrual cycle tracking via temperature sensor
So the Oura Ring is a far more rounded tracker – with deeper health insights and more integrations with existing services.
There is one trick up the Samsung Galaxy Ring’s sleeve of course. Gesture control enables you to dismiss smartphone alarms and take photos using a double-pinch gesture on the ring finger.
Winner: Oura wins, but Samsung nails the core experience
Battery Life
Here’s another win for the Samsung: battery life.
First up, it will last seven days between charges, the same as Oura.
But if you also use a Samsung smartwatch, you can get 30% on top of that, as the watch will take over continuous HR tracking during the day.
Finally, there’s the charging. Samsung uses a neat charging case, that will offer three complete charges. That’s better than the puck used by Oura, which has a habit of flipping over and dislodging the ring. Game, set, and match Samsung.
Winner: Samsung
Which Is Right for You?
If your decision purely comes down to money, given the price of the Galaxy Ring, we’d certainly opt for the Oura Ring Gen 3 right now. The base price of $299/£299 means you have a couple of years until you’re out of pocket from Samsung – and you get more insights along the way.
In terms of health features, the Oura Ring offers more insights, with new features such as Cardiovascular Age, Symptom Checker and a myriad of Integrations. But the Samsung does its sleep coaching and Energy Score well – and there are no red flags in terms of this feature set.
If you own a Samsung Galaxy Watch, and want a smart ring to jump in with, the Galaxy Ring seems a really safe bet.
But if you want the BEST smart ring – it’s Oura Ring for the foreseeable future.
